Reserved for Hifsa : Dissertation Literature Review

Topic Name: Data privacy issues in agriculture business which uses the Internet of Things (IoT) Technology.

Description :

In the present generation Internet of Things or IoT is being widely used in various technological fields and across multiple use cases, thereby benefitting us. In recent trends, the industrial sector and agriculture sectors are using IoT technology. Industries use IoT technology in the process of manufacturing products or machinery equipment for automation, operation, maintenance and monitoring of the inventory. Industries or companies are also monitoring the performance of their equipment for increased productivity and predictive care of their machines. The agricultural sector is the latest sector which is recently into the use of this technology for smart or precision farming along with livestock maintenance and intelligent irrigation. IoT in agriculture helps in increased yield productivity, thereby meeting the supply chain demands. The data collected through the IoT devices are also helpful in analyzing the crop requirements for quality yield and inventory management. Additionally, IoT technology enhances the product by using various sensors to monitor and check the temperature, humidity, moisture and other multiple factors which increase or decrease the yield of the farmers (Nawandar & Satpute, 2020). Apart from benefitting the farmers, this technology has problems associated with its usage or implementation.

Although most of the countries are widely using this technology, there are many sectoral issues related to this business or agricultural industry. Due to the lack of proper regulatory laws, the data generated through this industry does not have adequate ownership to control and own the data in the agriculture business generated through the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies (Olakunle, Tharek, Igbafe, & Chee Yen, 2018). The data generated through these IoT devices are vulnerable where appropriate rules and permissions are required to control the ownership and access to this data. Additionally, there are various concerns like an intrusion to the network using any agriculture device, fabrication of the IoT devices, theft of small IoT tools, etc. which increases the threat and risk to the whole infrastructure as well as the data collected.

The data generated from these farmers by various methods, like the use of sensors and high tech farming equipment which provide more information about farm activities, is said to the ownership of the company involved in the smart farming. The privacy concerns are the main issues which act as the forefront of the use of IoT in the agriculture business (Rasmussen, 2016). Farmers are mostly worried about the organization involved in this IoT Agriculture could misuse their age-old farming techniques data for the benefit, or companies can use this information against them (Ferris & Rahman, 2018).

The purpose of this study is to understand the concerns that members of the agriculture business are having about the privacy and governance of the data generated through the use of IoT technology. I’m considering a population size of 15 – 20 to participate in and gather information, where I would involve the participants/population in interviews and surveys to collect and analyze the data for my qualitative research study. The population sample would be chosen from the USA, where the use of IoT technology in the field of agriculture is being used widely. I would be selecting the qualitative method to do my research, where I’m thinking of using open-ended interview questions to collect my data.

References Ferris, L., & Rahman, Z. (2018). Responsible Data in Agriculture. Global Open Data fro Agriculture and Nutrition. Muhammad, S. F., Shamyla, R., Abid, A., Kamran, A., & Naeem, M. A. (October, 2019). A Survey on the Role of IoT in Agriculture for the Implementation of Smart Farming. IEEE Vol 7 2019, 156237 - 156271. N, S., V, S. K., & Sharad, S. (2019). Precision Agriculture using Data Mining Techniques and IOT. 2019 1st International Conference on Advances in Information Technology (ICAIT) Advances in Information Technology (ICAIT), 376 - 381. Olakunle, E., Tharek, A. R., Igbafe, O., & Chee Yen, L. (2018). An Overview of Internet of Things (IoT) and Data Analytics in Agriculture: Benefits and Challenges. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 99. Rasmussen, N. (2016). From Precision Agricultur ecision Agriculture to Market Manipulation: A New et Manipulation: A New Frontier in the Legal Community. Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology , 490.